Scale Development Study: Readiness for Discharge from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and Home Care of Premature Infants by Parents

Abstract

Objective: To develop the readiness for hospital discharge scale for mothers and fathers with a premature infant hospitalised in the neonatal intensive care unit and to test the validity and reliability of this scale. Study Design: A cross-sectional study. Place and Duration of Study: Sakarya University Education and Research Hospital, Sakarya, Turkey, from February to June 2020. Methodology: This study was conducted with 136 mothers and 133 fathers, who met the inclusion criteria and agreed to participate in the study. After the content validity of the scale was evaluated, the exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, reliability analysis (Cronbach Alfa) and test-retest reliability were performed. Results: As a result of the factor analysis, items of the mother form and the father form were reduced to 22 and 20, respectively from the scale with 25 items. The confirmatory factor analysis fit indexes were calculated as x(2)/df: 1.666, SRMR: 0.0598 in mothers and x(2)/df: 2.110, SRMR: 0.0692 in fathers. The Cronbach's Alpha values were 0.911 for mothers and 0.948 for fathers. The test-retest intraclass correlation coefficient was observed as 0.835 for mothers and 0.942 for fathers. Conclusion: In line with the validity and reliability analyses, it was determined that the mother and father forms of the readiness of the parents of premature infants hospitalised in the NICU for the discharge of infants and home care scale were valid and reliable scales for measuring parents' readiness for discharge.